The storm had passed, but the world hadn't found peace.
The valley was a graveyard of silence — soaked earth, scorched stone, and a faint shimmer in the air where reality itself had torn and stitched itself back together.
Aria stood barefoot on the damp ground, the wind pulling at her hair. Her body felt foreign — heavier, quieter, but alive. For the first time in days, she couldn't feel the Rift whispering inside her skull. No voices. No hunger. No god in her veins.
Only the echo of it.
Damian watched her from a few feet away, still trying to believe she was real. He'd seen her die — or something close to it — and yet here she was, breathing, her pulse steady beneath the fragile skin of her throat.
But even as she smiled at him, something in her eyes had changed.
It wasn't darkness anymore. It was absence — a silence too deep to name.
"You shouldn't be standing yet," Damian said, his voice raw from sleeplessness.
